LITTLE BOSTON — Not long after the pier at Point Julia was built in 1979 to serve the gill net fishery, “there was not a lot of gill net fishing anymore,” Port Gamble S’Klallam Chairman Jeromy Sullivan said.
But the pier took on new life as the center of “an awesome playground in the bay.”
“We all jumped off it. That was our favorite thing to do,” Sullivan said on Sept. 4. “We would fish off it, jump off it. We’re sad as a community that it’s coming down.”
The pier and its creosoted pilings will be removed beginning next week, as part of the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe’s larger project to remove debris from the bay.
Work will begin on Sept. 8 and continue through the 15th, according to Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe spokeswoman Ginger Vaughan. The work was scheduled based on fishing and harvesting dates and tides.
“The pier at Point Julia is being removed because it is obsolete and structurally unsound,” Vaughan wrote in an email. “It is not useful for fishers. Its creosote pilings are also an issue to human, habitat, and fish/shellfish health.”
The Debris Removal Project is funded by state Department of Ecology. The state and Tribe are co-managers of the state’s fisheries, and removal of the pier, which has creosoted pilings, is part of a larger project to remove debris from around the bay.
The project is being managed by the Tribe’s Natural Resources Department and is separate from the cleanup of the old Pope & Talbot mill site, which is being managed by the Department of Ecology.
Phase 1 of Port Gamble S’Klallam’s project has been to remove debris, including old nets and boats, from the shoreline on the reservation. This phase is almost complete, Vaughan said.
More than 50 people volunteered to help clean up the shoreline on June 14, and more than 35 volunteered on July 26. The Tribe has also used the project to educate the community about the importance of debris removal to the health and eco-system of Port Gamble Bay.
The other part of the project is removing debris from privately-owned shoreline and tidelands along the bay, outside the reservation boundaries. Members of the Tribe’s Natural Resources Department have reached out to property owners, including visiting door-to-door, to explain the project, how the work will be done, and that debris removal will come as no cost to the owner.
Vaughan said the Tribe has debris-removal permission from about 18 of an estimated 50 land owners along the shoreline.
All work must be completed by June 2015.
Vaughan said that while the Tribe’s project is different than and separate from the larger toxics cleanup of Port Gamble Bay that Ecology is overseeing, the efforts of the two projects represent a holistic approach to the cleanup of the bay.
“Before this agreement, the Tribe was already working on a plan to spearhead an effort to remove debris from around the bay. DOE liked the concept as it fed nicely into their general goals, so they asked to partner with the Tribe,” Vaughan wrote.
“Considering the cultural and ecological value the Tribe puts on Port Gamble Bay, they have spent a lot of time and energy doing what they can to further protection efforts. To this end, they are the most knowledgeable when it comes to debris from around the bay and the resources necessary to clean it up.”
Sullivan said something may take the place of the pier.
“We’re working with the community on what they envision,” he said. We don’t want to impact the integrity of the bay, but whatever it is it will have less impact than what’s in there now.”
Jon Rose, president of Olympic Property Group, the real estate arm of Pope Resources, said in an earlier story that cleanup of the old mill site should begin by July 2015, pending permits.
According to Rose, all business tenants of the mill site will be gone by May. Removal of pilings and an old dock will come first, followed by intertidal dredging to remove wood waste and other debris. A layer of sand will be placed to contain any waste that could not be removed. Cleanup should be completed by 2017 or 2018, Rose said.
